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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28300587">Darśana</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani'>avani</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ramayana - Valmiki</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Urmila's Adventures in Dreamland, Yuletide Treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 01:20:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,242</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28300587</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nidra Devi's service is dangerous and often difficult.<br/>(It is something, to have a friend.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Darśana</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/gifts">AllegoriesInMediasRes</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Even the most merciful of goddesses can offer miracles for nothing," says Nidra Devi, almost apologetically, "and I have always been considered rather implacable."</p><p>It does not take Urmila very long to learn the truth of this. On the face of it, it seemed an easy enough bargain: fourteen years of sleep, so that her husband in exchange might stay away to ensure of the safety of her sister and brother-in-law during their unjust exile. But Nidra Devi holds authority over more than mere afternoon dozes; she deals in dreams, so very often dangerous and deceptive, and expects those in her service to dispense them in her name. No matter how tricky or terrifying illusion might be, it is their responsibility to cajole it along the night-roads into the slumbering minds of the world. </p><p>Or at least so claims Urmila's supervisor: a grim gentleman who appears to have been employed in this work for centuries. Doubtless this is because he is so overbearing no other profession would have him. With the vague nature of sleep, she knows nothing of his appearance or actions, save that he preferred to be addressed as the General. Urmila made the mistake, early on, at laughing at this ridiculous nickname as she might have in the company of her sisters, only to sense a decided lack of amusement in response. A single acquaintance she had, in this mad world, who she had managed already to offend.</p><p>She had not found much reason to laugh since then.</p><p>"Mourn my time," the General is fond of complaining, "wasted training a child who means to work for no more than the bat of an eye!"</p><p>Urmila, who thinks a decade and a half quite the sacrifice, does not respond. </p><p>"Look, O lords, how she manages to misplace even a reverie meant for an infant," he announces to his ancestors.</p><p>Urmila, her cheeks burning from her blunder, bites her tongue.</p><p>"Never tell me they no longer teach the difference between Kannuaj and Kambhoj!"</p><p>Urmila, patience long lost, begins to explore the possibility of murder upon the metaphysical realm.</p><p>*</p><p>It is two weeks, or perhaps twenty, into her service--time seems now folded in upon itself, in increasingly unsettling ways--Urmila is sent to deliver a dream to someone she knows for the first time. The General, doubting her competence, has barred her from such a task in the past, and out of sheer spite, Urmila is determined to succeed. She does everything exactly right, or so she believes: plucks the dream from its resting place, cajoles it into motion, and begins to walk the night-road in silence. Dreams are, at the best of times, never talented conversationalists, but this one is eerily silent in a way that bodes ill for the recipient's ease.</p><p>Little that Urmila cares; this dream is meant for Bharat, throne-usurper. He might stay awake, red-eyed and terrified, for the rest of his natural life for all she minds. <br/>And yet--the dream trundles along beside her, and her curiosity grows. Finally she can resist no longer, and lets her fingers drift across long enough to form an impression of -- lakes of mire, Dasharatha the King carried away on a donkey-drawn chariot, a woman draped in red laughing with scorn...</p><p>By the time the General finds her, huddled on the side of the night-roads and weeping, the dream is long escaped. She expects he means to scold her, and invites it for once; resentment might prove a balm for the shock of realizing her father-in-law is surely dead. Failing that, perhaps he will leave her in peace as he goes to recapture the errant nightmare, allowing her time to weep for having misjudged Bharat--she can feel the echo of his panic and terror even now, and knows he deserves none of her past accusations and assumptions. </p><p>Instead he hovers beside her.</p><p>"The first time I brought a message of the future to my brothers," he says, "I gave way to temptation as well."</p><p>"Did you," Urmila says tonelessly. She is certain this will somehow transform into a tale of his own triumphant victory, and her own inadequacy in contrast. What a life she's chosen for herself, she thinks, where her only choices are to fail at every commission or risk bringing heartbreak to those she holds most dear. </p><p>"Oh yes," he says, mistaking--or ignoring--her insolence. "It foretold of my own death, for which either one of them would be the cause. I was charged with choosing which one of them was to receive it."</p><p>Urmila stares. To know dreams, of course, is to know the future: but this seems a cruelty utterly undeserved. She wonders, briefly, if she might ever be able to make a similar choice herself--but knows only that it must not be Sita, never be Sita, come what may.</p><p>"Who did you choose?" she asks, half-expecting him to return to his usual disdain and refuse. She knows very little of his past: but knows what he has mentioned in passing, of a mortal life spent as the middle-born of three brothers, of a choice made at the height of his career to seek a new world to conquer so that his beloved brothers need not fear he sought to outmatch them. </p><p>"Neither," he says. "I deliberated long and hard: would it be my elder brother, strong and proud, who sought nothing all his life to protect me? Or the younger, clever and soft-spoken, who wept at causing harm to the most inconsequential of mortals? Who would I blight, and know that no one of it would save me, in the end? So I stepped back from the night-roads, and let the nightmare roam free; I wager it roams alone even now, and neither of my brothers will have the warning."</p><p>"They might save you, though," Urmila points out, "if only they knew it."</p><p>The General laughs without humor. "They might damn me in the process of saving me," he says. "And even if they do not--in those brief days I wake to walk alongside them once more, I choose not to dwell on what is to come. Remember that, little princess: when happiness comes your way, hold it close while you can. Dark days are like the tide: they wash away only to return someday."</p><p>That she dismisses as unhelpful advice. Happiness is Sita back at last, and once fourteen years have ended, and Sita home again, Urmila will never let her step so much as a stone's throw away. Still, it was kindly meant, and Urmila supposes she is grateful.</p><p>In Nidra Devi's realm, one does not ask questions about the past; or at least hope for them to be answered. But perhaps, someday, the General might share another story of himself, enough that she might wonder that had they known each other in the mortal realm, she might have known and respected him like the philosophers her father employed.</p><p>"Well?" says the General, clearly uncomfortable with all this goodwill. "What more do you await, girl? Our duty remains."</p><p>Of course it does. </p><p>Urmila forces herself to rise to her feet, beginning to scan the night-roads once more for the dream she was meant to deliver. Fourteen years of service she promised Nidra Devi, and fourteen years of Nidra Devi will have, if it tears Urmila's soul in two. </p><p>Only--</p><p>It is something, after all, to have a friend. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>* Darśana - (Sanskrit) a vision or dream<br/>* Urmila's bargain with Nidra Devi to sleep for fourteen years so that Lakshmana can stay awake for the same time is a popular folktale; the detail of her being employed as a dreamkeeper/dreamhunter is my own invention.<br/>* Kannuaj and Kambhoj are ancient Indian cities/kingdoms. <br/>* The details of Bharata's dream are taken from the Ayodhya Kand.<br/>* Similarly, Kumbhakarna, brother of Ravana, is the other Ramayana character prominently associated with Nidra Devi. It's unclear in sources how he wound up with his boon to sleep for six months on end, wake for one day, then sleep again (with the caveat that if woken early, he would be assured to die) - some have it be a slip of the tongue, and others deliberate sabotage by the gods. I prefer the headcanon that this was his own choice, to give himself dominion that would not interfere with his brother Ravana's.<br/>*Of note, Kumbhakarna, while technically killed by Rama's arrow, is sent unwillingly into battle by his brother Ravana and betrayed by his younger brother Vibhishana. In a way, both his beloved siblings are indeed responsible for his death.<br/>* Happy Yuletide, Ally! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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